What are the reasons for Barry's downfall?
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Felixthecat34213 — 10 years ago(December 13, 2015 09:50 PM)
Having said that, I was not at all "defending" Bullingdon, I was giving my opinion as to where it all went downhill for Barry, or if you prefer, I am critical of Barry. Although it must be said that the movie presents both sides of both of them, the good and the bad.
Why? He's the only responsible adult in this film. He stood up like a man and took care of his family's estate, balance their finances, and care for his grieving mother because Barry was poisonous to her. Not once do we see Bary comfort his heartbroken wife over the death of their son. Instead he drinks himself into oblivion.
Redmund Barry was a better man when he had nothing at all and no concept of the world around him. Perhaps this was the message of the 19th century novel, when class distinctions were so important to people.
I don't really see Bullingdon as a coward. He did what he thought he had to do to get rid of Barry. (Again he was poisonous to him and his mother.) -
trisul — 10 years ago(December 13, 2015 10:51 PM)
He stood up like a man and took care of his family's estate, balance their finances, and care for his grieving mother because Barry was poisonous to her.
Yes, that he did.
I think we largely agree about the characters. If you look back at the thread, it is about the reasons for Barry's downfall, and my though was:
Surely, it is obvious that lack of love for his wife and stepson, and especially his disrespect for her, were the seeds of his downfall.
This was interpreted by some as a "defense of Bullingdon and unfair to Barry. I don't think so. I think the movie tries not to paint either character black or white entirely, giving some good and bad aspects of each in order to allow us to think about the situation and the issues and not just fall for one character or the other. -
Felixthecat34213 — 10 years ago(December 14, 2015 01:18 PM)
This was interpreted by some as a "defense of Bullingdon and unfair to Barry. I don't think so. I think the movie tries not to paint either character black or white entirely, giving some good and bad aspects of each in order to allow us to think about the situation and the issues and not just fall for one character or the other.
LOL I knowthis poster is ludicrous. The story is certainly black and white, but Barry was never a good man to his wife and step son. -
Errington_92 — 10 years ago(March 26, 2016 10:10 AM)
As the film goes along
we see Redmund grow from a young, insecure, naive country boy into a reckless manipulator.
I suppose in a weird way it's a cautionary tale
about seeing too much of the world.
Very true in seeing
Barry Lyndon
as a cautionary tale. Barry's recklessness caused him to lose sight of his former goals to greed. Barry use to be noble and honest, yet gave in to opportunism and being self-serving.
I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not. -
kenny-164 — 10 years ago(March 28, 2016 10:50 AM)
Barry Lyndon is certainly not at all about Bullingdon being an admirable character. Any such interpretation completely misunderstands the film. Thackeray was not a defender of the aristocracy. He was a satirist. But beyond that the novel is in the first person, containing nothing of the false narration included in the film (that the narration is both cynical and wrong I will assume here is beyond question. For example think early on about the narrator's assertion that Barry was "filled with admiration" on viewing Quin and his troops, when the facial expressions Ryan O'Neal gave Barry show nothing of the sort.)
But among many other changes to the novel Kubrick introduces this false narrator. Why? I think we are intended to hear the narrator as giving expression to the negative view of Barry as the outsider. It also serves the purpose of making the point Kubrick himself said was what his film, thematically, was about - the inadequacy of language, specifically in comparing that which the film shows (how film is different from, say, a book) from what is said.
In viewing the film the narrator's statements thus are, particularly when moral judgments are included to Barry's disadvantage, to be essentially countered in understanding what Kubrick is really trying to say. This is not only generally true, but as regards Bullingdon, it is his self serving purpose in returning, and in his failure to accept satisfaction when Barry shoots into the ground, his willful attempt to keep Lady Lyndon out of this portion of the events, that we SEE Bullingdon for the awful person he is.
Similarly we see little to support the notion that Barry is motivated to any great extent by greed. His focus certainly after Bryan is born is on his son and then to protect his son at great cost to the estate's fortunes, rather than on business ventures that would add to, and not detract from, his wealth.
Barry is primarily motivated to seek intimacy, often seeking a father figure. Over the course of his narrative he seeks to apply his will to attain that general goal, but is continuously thwarted by forces outside his power. Take the example of his encounter with Lischen, the young Dutch woman. If Barry had not tarried with her, he likely would have gotten away, back to England or Ireland. But he sought her intimacy, and this led to how his stories for Captain Potzdorff ended up being so out of date. Or how he briefly thought he had a father figure protector in Captain Grogan, only to have him cut down by a Frenchman's musket.
In other words Barry believes his life would be a story he would write, but it ended up being written about him. -
EvilBaldDude — 10 years ago(November 15, 2015 06:58 AM)
I'd consider that obvious. You can draw a direct corollary between him cheating on Lady Lyndon and his leg getting blown off in a duel with her son.
There is other stuff in there about high society etiquette that Barry would never have been able to meet up to, and upper class snobbery. But that's all just dressing, and mostly outside the chain. -
Naughty-God — 10 years ago(July 16, 2015 08:39 PM)
His ambition outweighed his talent.
There's a scene in the film where we see Lady Lyndon signing letters of note to the various creditors that Barry has incredulously accumulated over the years together and the narrator says something to the effect that Barry had the ability to rise in the world of high society but lacked the instinct to maintain and excel his presence in such an environment. His hazardous spending of other people's money exemplified that. -
Opwiz — 10 years ago(July 29, 2015 02:59 PM)
He didn't fall down he always had a fatal flaw that never got resolved. His aristocratic titles and money didn't make the flaw go away. You could debate what caused this flaw in him (him lacking a father could be it) but it made him cheat, lie, desert his men, treat his wife and stepson with contempt, squander his family's wealth, etc. In the end it all just came back to him.
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Mr_Wolf_80 — 10 years ago(August 03, 2015 07:59 AM)
The point of the film is that he was of humble origins and no money could buy the respect of the aristocrats, who would continue to see and consider him a poor, rude and unmannered social climber.
I'm Winston Wolf. I solve problems.
And no dream is ever just a dream -
Opwiz — 10 years ago(August 03, 2015 11:48 AM)
I think the movie showed tragic flaws in both in the protagonist and the individuals part of the aristocracy - it's not about one being better than the other. There was no real redemptive moment for any of the characters, no lessons learned, no change. Barry was just a catalyst for the downfall of the aristocratic family - the seeds were there before he arrived. They can blame each other but it's really just long due debts being paid. Call it karma or sin (to miss the mark), trying to cheat your way to wealth or love - wife deluding herself, Barry lying, betraying and cheating to acquire money and higher position, etc. So I don't think the movie is picking sides in the "squabble", it just shows it in all its ugliness.
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starfoxfan86 — 10 years ago(September 19, 2015 04:53 PM)
My theory would be the expenses of his lavish lifestyle in combination with lord Bullingdon's grudges and actions. I think Redmond had the extravagant lifestyle and attitude to fit in with high class society of the time. Bullingdon pretty much has the same motivations as young Redmond did, only Bullindon had the ability to do more damage- and I believe he'd be bound to follow the same arc as Redmond.
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KobiyashiMauru — 10 years ago(November 29, 2015 08:25 AM)
A lot of you aren't going to like the answer but Barry's downfall was due to the fact that he didn't have a father growing up and was raised/influenced by a committee of idiots.
Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.
Yogi Berra -
kaskait — 10 years ago(December 06, 2015 10:02 AM)
Not truly understanding the society in which he miraculously found himself among. He should have studied who and what they were and he should have treated Bullingdon with kid gloves. But Lyndon was only street smart, it never went further than that to his misfortune. He was only a pretty face.
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Felixthecat34213 — 10 years ago(December 13, 2015 09:43 PM)
I would say settling down and of course setting out to deceive a woman and her young son.
As the film goes along we see Redmund grow from a young, insecure, naive country boy into a reckless manipulator.
I suppose in a weird way it's a cautionary tale about seeing too much of the world. Redmund knew where he came from and he saw where he could go. Most average Irish, English, whatever country, would have lived, breathed, reproduced and died in the same place. To see such great wealth and to know that it is attainable is almost too much to bear.
I suppose Barry's drive to better his life is ironically his downfall.